The Language of Frogs
by shelter
Summary: Challenge fic for Dany le Fou and Shiek. They're only together because they're too weak to tear each apart. But with the Organisation hunting them down and something wrong with Raki's arm, being together might be the only option left. Survival within and without will depend on who can win Riful to their side. AU. Dauf/ Riful/ Raki.
1. Croak

**THE LANGUAGE OF FROGS**

_A Claymore short story_

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**Disclaimer: Claymore & its characters belong to Norihiro Yagi & his affiliates**

**Rating: M (sex and language)**

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_**On this Fic (01.01.2013) -** _  
_In early 2012 I was approached by Shiek and Dany le Fou to write a story involving Raki and Riful (the requirements can still be visible on Dany Le Fou's profile page). Both Raki and Riful were to have escaped the Organisation and the chaos involving the Destroyer, meeting up and becoming more than friends. I've chosen to interpret this literally, adding my bleak viewpoint of how Riful and Riful would treat each other. This first chapter develops the characters and sets the tone for the rest of the story, which will be in three parts depending on length. _

_An earlier edit of this story appeared on MangaHelpers forum. Thanks to Shiek and Dany for their feedback. _

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**Chapter 1 - Croak**

_"He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man."_  
**- Samuel Johnson**

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At their first fight, Raki floors Dauf.

They clash in the woods near the farm where they're all hiding out. The trees stand so thick in this forest that Raki finds it impossible to turn without slashing across a trunk or a branch. As he rains blow upon blow on Dauf, he realises he can't see Riful anymore. His audience of one has been replaced by hundreds of pencil-thin trees whirling around him like a stampede.

Dauf lunges, throwing his full weight behind his final move. Raki misjudges the attack, and the force of Dauf's weight propels him into the nearest trunk. He feels it warp under the impact. He shields his face against any further attack. But Dauf's panting, his lower lip blown up like fist and leaking blood.

When Raki brings his fist down on Dauf's face, he feels his entire frame shift to accommodate the thrust. He feels his entire shoulder pulse with blood, his nerves discharging, the wings of his back jammed with muscle. He sees Dauf's face collapse inward, and the larger man falls to the ground. When he doesn't recover, Raki backs away, and finds something for support. His arms burn. He knows something in him has changed.

"Very good."

Riful emerges from the trees behind Dauf. Bright shapes of sunshine streaming through the foliage makes it seem as if she's wearing a crown. She looks at Dauf, and then back to Raki.

"Did you feel something different?" she asks.

Her question disturbs him. "My arm," he says. "Do you think –"

"It doesn't matter what I think," she says. "What do you feel?"

Raki wipes his face on his sleeve. His vision blurs, but returns when he sees his sleeve comes up bloody. Whatever good feeling he'd felt before is gone. All he feels right now are the ache of overused muscles and something swelling at his abdomen.

"So." Riful approaches, puts an hand on his arm to steady him. "You won. You win the spoils."

She strips. She removes her dress with a flick of her arms, and dumps it on a hedge. There are parts of her that are raw and still unhealed, discoloured wounds with shredded muscle. But Raki still feels the blood rise to his chest, his own body tightening as presents herself before him.

"I'm not going to claim it," he says.

"It wasn't a fair fight!" Dauf has recovered. He tries to get up, but fails. A faint odour – no, a visible aura – smoulders off his skin. "If I awakened –"

"If you awaken, those creatures would be here and all of us would be dead!" Riful snaps. She returns to Raki. "You have to claim your prize. This is life, not some gentleman's game."

She seizes his hand and forces it between her legs. But Raki elbows her away. Riful stumbles and lands awkwardly. Her hair splashes across her face. For a moment, she looks like a little girl, lost and lonely among the trees, the entire forest a dangerous prison.

But when she looks at Raki again, her arms are already turning into streams of flesh – ribbons tense with muscle.

"Get out of my sight before I kill you."

And Raki flees. But he knows he'll be back.

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They have come to an unspoken arrangement: they tolerate each other only because they are weak. They stay close because the world beyond the farm is full of death. In staying close, they have fallen into a sort of routine.

Raki always leaves the farm early, before the wide open sky begins to lighten at its edges. He collects his sword and heads into the woods up north. He leaves because he's the only one there who needs eat to survive and recover. He has to hunt far and wide for game, because every living thing avoids the farm.

From the verandah of the farmhouse, he views the dark clouds of overgrown crop spreading in all directions. It surrounds the lone farmhouse like an army. He will cut through the crop, heading for a strand of willow trees at the foot of a small hill. There he hops through an animal fence, marking the northernmost boundary of the farm.

On his way, he will pass the pond. He will glimpse the ominous body of Riful floating in the shallow end. She'll turn to face him, stretching herself out like a predator sunning herself, in a haze of water insects and tadpoles. He'll see the wounds made by the Destroyer and the Abyss Eaters, like smudges of watercolour on her skin.

They don't exchange words. Raki continues walking, he doesn't look back. But with each step, he will hear the blood pounding in his ears. He will feel her eyes, like hot coals, boring into the back of his head.

When Raki returns after his day of hunting, he will drag whatever game meat he's gathered to the back of the farmhouse. There he'll build a fire, eat his only meal of the day. In the pitch-black darkness, the fire splays out like a beckoning hand, drawing out Riful and Dauf. They appear out from the night, perched on the threshold of fully revealing themselves.

"You should know better than to start a fire," Riful will say, or something equivalent. After a day in solitude, her voice is like melted butter, like a song he's been straining to hear

"I have to eat," Raki says.

"Listen to Riful," Dauf will add. His voice has the heavy, grumpy tone of someone who has just woken from deep sleep.

Then they settle into silence as the fire slowly ebbs into embers and ash. They stare at each other: Raki in one corner, Riful and Dauf in the other. Her shoulders are turned, making it obvious a comfortable distance between her and Dauf.

This is the arrangement: he knows they cannot awaken to regenerate or heal themselves, lest they give away their location to the hordes of Abyss Feeders roaming the woods. Then again, he knows he's not in the best of shape either after his escape from the Organisation. So they stare at each other as Raki's fire dies and gives way to darkness.

But Raki knows there's something that makes these arrangements unstable. He feels it pulsing, as if driven by a separate heart. His entire right arm – and the flesh sticking out of it – tingles as the wind rises. Whatever Priscilla put in there makes him restless, gives him an appetite for half-cooked meat and, possibly, is turning him something other than human.

He holds his right arm against the last light from the fire. He clenches his fist, sees the muscle bunch around his wrists and triceps. From the other end, he catches Riful watching him, head cocked to one side. He thinks he can see her smile, but then the fire dies completely.

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"Show me."

Riful makes the request in the presence of Dauf. Raki sees him tense, completely stop his restless pacing just outside the wall he broke. With three of them orbiting around some unsaid intention, everything done in each other's presence seems to be significant.

Dauf acts disinterested, but loiters nearby. In the sheer curtains of dust dancing around the room, Riful stands between them, her hands absently playing with her torn dress.

When Raki pulls off his vest, he feels his joints crackle. He turns on the spot. His shoulder aches as he stretches it out for display. In the faded mirror that rests on the far wall, he sees the angry bruise where his right arm joins the shoulder.

He flexes. Riful strains her head to see. To help, he directs her hand over the chunk of shoulder still tender and sore from his fight with Dauf. Her small, twig-like fingers finally reach the point where the Priscilla made the incision of her flesh. Riful runs her ghostly touch over the point. Raki feels it pulse.

"Did you feel that?"

"What did you do?"

Riful's mouth curves into a small smile. Raki hesitates, then decides it's enough.

"You know, I'm not a freak you can touch and poke –"

But his right arm responds. It trembles, his skin bubbles, as if he's got a muscle spasm. Riful reaches out to touch it again. And then everything explodes in pain.

"Hold still," she says.

The next thing Raki knows he's on the floor, splinters of wood pressing into his face. He sees Dauf through a haze – watching – his face screwed up with disgust. The pain comes again: blurring, shredding, strangling. His entire shoulder dislocates.

When he reaches out to feel it, he traces the beginnings of another arm, fingers and all.

He sees everything: the entirety of Priscilla's thrown-away arm, sticking out from his shoulder – reaching out to Riful – drawn by something – the yoki she emanates. Just when he thinks both sets of fingers will touch, the arm warps into an armoured wing.

"Dauf!" Riful shouts.

Within seconds, he's surrounded by ropes of muscles and flesh. A hundred ribbons from Riful's arms contain the offending limb into a cocoon. He's suffocating. He's swallowing. He screams. He gags.

"Dauf!"

He's had enough. Raki clenches his right fist, summons the same feeling that he experienced when fighting Dauf. He feels every roll of flesh fastened on his arm. With a heave, he grabs a handful of Riful's tendrils and pulls himself free from her grasp. A rain shower of blood tells him he's not trapped anymore.

As Dauf approaches, he darts aside. Dauf's punch meets the floor. Its momentum rocks the farmhouse.

Raki scrambles aside. Everything spins. Dauf is screaming something, cursing him.

"Shut up, Dauf," says Riful.

His arm burns. Pieces of Riful's torn flesh melt from his skin in crisp flakes, filling the wrecked room of the house with the awful scent of cooked meat. He has a vision of his nightly feasts, his biting into dead bodies as the darkness overcomes him, his two Awakened allies just out of view –

Riful appears before him. Raki sees she's missing one arm. Her entire left portion her body is a palette of every shade of crimson imaginable.

"What the fuck are you?"

Riful collapses. She doesn't get up.

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Raki takes Riful's trembling body down to the pond near the farmhouse. He does it before a hysterical Dauf has any time to react. He leaps into it, plunging Riful's body underwater. She's so light she seems to float. When he surfaces, the pond has turned into a bowl of copper red.

His vision hasn't fully stabilised. He isn't sure if the warped pounding in his ears is the after effect of Riful's experiment or Dauf's frenzied bawling in house. But he tears what's left of his shirt and pants, fastening a something to stop the bleeding over the stub of Riful's right arm he tore out.

It's when he's finished with the knot that Riful's other arm comes to life. It splits into shaky tendrils, coils around Raki's waist, up his bare crouch. But the effort infuses the pond with another rose of blood.

"You're going to kill yourself if you try to awaken," he says.

Her limbs slip up his rear, fasten themselves around his thighs. They anchor him into the soft mud at the bottom of the pond.

Her eyes flutter to life. She sputters fresh blood all over his chest.

Her first words are: "I could kill you now. I could kill you and be done with it."

Raki replies, "But you won't."

"Then claim your prize."

He tries to summon the memory of the punch that realigned Dauf's face in the early days of the arrangement. The mere thought of it jolts his right arm into anticipation. But no – he stops it, and thinks instead of the cool red water and Riful's hands all over him.

He's tempted. But he knows it's not time.

"Not yet," Raki declares.

"You pussy."

She tries to stimulate him.

"I'm not going to fuck you."

This time her touch wavers, then drops away completely. Her remaining arm recedes into itself. She hacks and coughs, but turns to face him and buries her bloodied face into his shoulder. Raki's ends up hugging her tight, arms curled around her open wound to stem the bleeding.

"So you're going to save my life?"

"Yes," he says.

Dauf gives out a yelp. Riful doesn't respond. They lie tangled in the pond as frogs belch and crickets sizzle in the crimson-stained water.

"You're such a freak."

When Riful's hands dart back to his right arm, he jerks it at her. Rolls of her flesh fasten themselves on his arm.

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_**END CHAPTER 1**_

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First edit on 24.12.2012.

NOTES: If possible I would like readers to comment on the situation Raki, Riful and Dauf are in. **_Is it feasible?_** _**Could such a balance of power take place?**_ Also, I wonder if **_Raki's condition_** could actually be possible in the Claymore universe.

Next chapter will be out end Jan 2013 or earlier.


	2. Ribbit

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**THE LANGUAGE OF FROGS** (continued)

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**Disclaimer: Claymore & its characters belong to Norihiro Yagi & his affiliates**

**Rating: M (sex and language)**

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**Chapter 2 - Ribbit**

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When Raki goes out to hunt, he knows Riful and Dauf fuck endlessly for the entire day.

He knows because they have this look about them. He sees Dauf with his predatory gaze, his slighted eye, daring to be questioned. He knows because Riful walks differently. She has a warm, loamy scent about her, the scent of her own flesh and fluids merged with hormones and hunger. But mostly, he knows because he's seen them – once.

They fuck in the ruined house, under the trunk-like remains of one the chimneys, out of view from the verandah so no one can see. But there's the unmistakable grunting – like an animal trying to keep its head above water – and the pinpricks of something in the air. Sometimes, his senses honed by the thrill of the hunt, Raki could hear them as he approached the farm. He wondered, then, if this was how yoki felt like.

He had watched them, crouched in hunting position, as if he were tracking some unfortunate creature. He had seen how Dauf took Riful by the neck, pushed her against the chimney stones like she were a piece of furniture, and then shoved his lower body in and out, in and out. He looked on Riful's face swirled with either pain or ecstasy, transforming into something not quite monster but not quite human. He stared – and Riful drove her teeth into Dauf's shoulder as he continued to sink his crotch deeper.

He remembers scenes that he saves in his head: the hog-like exertions coming from Dauf, Riful's cries muffled by Dauf's shoulder and the bricks falling from the chimney. He remembers Riful's legs hanging limp like the roots of a torn plant, swaying in slow rhythm.

He tries not to walk in on them. But when he does, he observes. Sometimes, he sees Riful's drifting to where he lies, hidden.

Sometimes after seeing them, he has to throw up. Sometimes, he retreats back into the woods to jerk off.

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He's practising with swords when something triggers his memory. As the frigid steel in his palms lands blow after blow on the tree he's duelling with, he can recall everything that led him up to today.

It's a different kind of recollection. It doesn't come to him from somewhere deep within his centre. It's not like his thoughts of Clare: they're still shuttered away inside his conscience. Instead, this comes from the motion of his stiff right arm. The point where Priscilla inserted foreign flesh bubbles with anticipation, the muscle memory of things he's done.

With each thrust of his arm he recalls Priscilla's sneer, her flirting fingernails on skin, the pulse of pain when her flesh penetrated his. He lets his arm ripple beneath his hits, the muscle taking on a life on its own, his broad strokes painting the trees in splinters.

There're other things he remembers too. His first taste of yoki – a bitter, toxic sludge, like maggot-infested meat – he can remember the sensation flowing backwards from his arm and out through his teeth. He can return to the moment another's yoki instigated the flesh in his arm, turning his senses into chaos.

He could feel his arm pounding in anticipation as two more powerful signals of yoki – Riful and Dauf – raided the men who had taken him prisoner. And when they had dispatched everyone, he still can replay the scene of their first confrontation, the moment their deal got struck:

Dauf, insisting they kill him like the rest, despite the strange scent he had been emitting.

His own uncertainty as his arm warped beneath him, unsure of fight or flight.

And finally Riful, who stilled his raging body with a touch from her fingertips, and her words like a proclamation.

"You've been screwed with."

"What's with your arm?"

"Why don't we see how strong you are, shall we?"

"If you can beat Dauf, you win everything. Your freedom, your .life, and me."

"But if you lose –"

His arm fuelling his strength, Raki swings the sword and cleaves the tree in one stroke. The sword shatters as it lands. His arm explodes with sensations so numerous he can't define them – pain, release, strain, fatigue.

But through the thin cut of woods, his arm feedbacks another centre of gravity. He hones in his thoughts, visualises with his limited mind and he knows that Riful is watching. And, he can tell she's aroused.

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At his second fight, Raki duels Dauf while Riful supervises.

"Concentrate on that feeling, that yoki," she instructs him. "And funnel your fear and rage through it."

They face each other. Riful standing between them like a peace offering. Raki sees that she's gently stroking Dauf's thigh.

"Remember, it's all about control," she tells him.

Control flies out the window as Dauf comes at him with continuous, wind-slicing jabs. His opponent assumes what Raki thinks is a classic boxer's stance: legs apart, body leaning forward, fists thick in front of his chest like warped iron helmets. When Raki throws an experimental hook with his left, he follows it through with an uppercut. Dauf mistakes the feint and Raki feels his knuckles dig into the larger creature's jawbone. There's an audible snap.

Dauf reels. But recovers almost immediately. He pauses and in the next moment he's brawling again.

The fight widens. Riful lets them out from the circle of saplings, now trampled over by their shuffling feet. As Dauf bears down on him, Raki keeps his distance. With each punch Dauf makes, the air sings with heat, his skin burning in the wake of his missed punches. Yoki, Raki thinks.

Then Dauf moves with a burst of speed. All Raki sees is Dauf's face distorting in a semi-awakening, and his opponent is inside his guard. Before he can block, Dauf plummets him square in the chest. The impact sends him tumbling through the trees.

Two of his blood-coated teeth fall to the ground like coins. He can't breathe - he can't -

"C'm here you little piece of shit!"

Dauf crashes through the barricade of shrubs, emerging in a halo of leaves and snapped branches. Raki just - just - rolls aside as Dauf's foot stamps into the ground beside him, leaving an impact crater half a metre deep. Before he can run, Raki sees the ground fall away. He can feel Dauf's fingers hauling him up by the hair. He struggles as Dauf spins him around to face him.

"So you think you can steal Riful from me?" he says.

But Riful's nowhere to be seen. Raki desperately scans the trees, now grey blurs in the onslaught of fog rolling down from the hills. But it's just him and Dauf.

"Is that what's this about?" Raki shouts back.

"Don't fuck with me."

His vision warps out, and Raki has his back to a tree. Dauf levels his elbow into his stomach. Raki chokes. His senses break down - in a riot of agony -

But Dauf pauses to admire his work. As the pain slowly tapers away, Raki angles his right hand into a wedge. Before Dauf can resume, he chops once with all the force he has into the bridge of Dauf's nose.

His assailant just stands there, stunned. The grip on him loosening, Raki chops again. Before he lands the blow he tenses his right arm, feels the alien sensation within it solidify his skin. His second chop hits the same spot. Dauf releases him.

Raki falls. On the ground, the first thing he sees is the bloody stump of Dauf's nose.

The second, Dauf's foot, bashing into his abdomen. The force propels him ten sword's lengths away. He's still near enough - conscious enough - to see Dauf envelope his face in his hands. Medusa-like curls of blood stream from his face. His muffled yells fill the woods.

Raki waits a moment. When he can see things properly, he drags himself through the forest. Stones and gravel nip at his injuries. The further he goes, the easier it gets for him to move - until he sees that his blood is lubricating all the friction from his half-crawling. Everything around him looks the same: chalky-white fog and stern lines of half-hidden tress. So he continues straight ahead.

When he tries to stand, the pain in his chest and side overrule him. He makes it for four paces before he's back on the ground again. This time all he sees is black.

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Raki wakes in darkness, something leeching into his right arm. Cold wind nicks at his bare thighs and torso. As his eyes adjust to the dark, he sees the black fractals of trees and a flush of stars beyond. Something moves - closer. At his right, she sees Riful.

Or he thinks it's her. She's half-transformed, her arms distributed into a multiple wisps of flesh, plugged into a specific point on his sore right arm.

"What - you - doing?"

"Don't move. Ever heard of yoki synchronisation?"

He hasn't. He doesn't really want to know either. Still, he understands that Riful's deep in concentration, her eyes open but not really self-aware. Where her flesh connects to his, he can feel a light, sticky warmth, as if someone's faint touch brushing against his arm.

He blinks her into clarity. As his eyes adjust to Riful under the starlight he can see the dark, suggestive terrain of her body: the sharp cuts of her shoulder blades, the shadows of her erect nipples through her translucent sundress – He tries to reach out for her, but for the first time his muscles won't obey.

Riful disengages from him, stepping back as if to examine a successful piece of her handiwork. Raki watches as she sweeps her glance over him. Then, without warning, she steps over him and straddles his waist.

"What –"

"Hush."

It's just like he's at the pond again. Only now, everything's reverse. He can hardly move his sore, battered body. But Riful, her nubile body gleaming even in the dark, is in full control. Her arms spill away into a thousand belts of flesh that massage and stimulate the only muscle in his body that can respond to her now. Raki tries to resist, but ends up relenting, unable to get his body to obey. He watches with morbid fascination as Riful lowers herself onto his crotch.

Riful moves. She generates friction, the only other feeling Raki can appreciate. There's an undergrowth of pleasure. But nothing it's like what he's seen Riful and Dauf do.

All Raki can say is: "You're taking advantage of me."

For the first time Riful smiles, the whites of her teeth visible in the corners. Raki thinks it would look adorable if she were not perched and squatting on Raki's lower abdomen.

"Ever the chaste one," she retorts. "How else could I get you to claim your prize?"

"It's all a game to you, isn't it?"

"It's better if you didn't take yourself so fucking seriously."

"Tell that to Dauf."

Riful sighs wistfully, as if Raki's mentioned a long-lost sweetheart. "Well. He's already accepted it. You should too."

"Then why do you keep fucking him?"

"Because he likes it. And it keeps him under my control."

Riful dismounts. She condenses into her fully human form, the bony little girl whose frame Raki remembered refusing when she first offered herself as a prize to him. She pouts playfully at him.

"Do you prefer me in this form?"

"You're crazy."

"Don't deny yourself just because you think you're human," she says.

By then she's spread herself over him, fitting him into her. Raki tenses as the friction of him entering her blossoms into gratification. This – isn't – what – he – had – expected.

She forces him deeper, and he sees that it's visibly hurting her. But when Riful sees him looking, she says:

"Think about it this way. Pain is the legitimate price to pay for total control."

She crawls over him, pours her hot, sandpaper-rough tongue over his chin.

"If it doesn't hurt, it's not worth winning."

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_**END CHAPTER 2**_

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NOTES: It took too long for me to finish this chapter & post it up. I'm not used to writing this kind of explicitly upfront sexual content.

The original idea for the story's been lost over the delay. But I'm bent on finishing this. In my usual style, Chapter 3 and a short epilogue will conclude everything.

Thanks to Shiek and Dany for their comments and help with getting the ideas out from my head into words.


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